2 days of serious activity

after Tuesday's work

after Monday's work

The last two days we have had a crew of 5 show up and they are starting to do some damage (in a good way)!!! A few more days of the laborious digging and then things will start to move pretty quickly - or so we hear...

A week later....

hmmm, this picture looks oddly like the one below. this was a very frustrating week as the crew only showed up 2 out of 5 days...I know renovations never go as planned, but it's still maddening!

Progress?

Well, the hole is bigger...that's something right?

WOW

One of these days, it's going to start looking better...today was not the day! The crew is amazed at all the rock - they usually deal w/ dirt under the concrete.

Basement Dig-Out

The crew showed up really early this a.m. and continued to jackhammer the floor. They started taking out loads by the BUCKET - yes, you read that right! They took out one of the windows and just started passing buckets out to a guy who would run it to the truck and then another guy would dump it in. And at one point, they were carrying out pieces by hand! They filled up two dump trucks today. And as you can see by the pictures below, there is still a long way to go.

I'll say it again, I am having a hard time envisioning a cozy family room out of this mess!

Under Construction!

It started today!!! After 4 long years of planning, we are officially under construction. The last few weeks have been spent clearing out our basement (that is a job when you've lived somewhere for almost 10 years!). As a result, our garage is PACKED and we have an old toilet sitting out in the yard - hopefully that's just for a day or two!

So, here are some before pics of the basement....

view from where we enter the basement

same view after the steps from the middle of the room were removed

view from the middle of the room looking towards the door/steps

same view with everything cleared out

I have to admit that it is hard for me to look at these pictures and believe that this is going to be a finished basement!

Here are a couple of pictures from today after the jackhammer had been taken to the floor:

This should be an interesting next few months!!!!

2 Velvet Boxes

I have been wanting to blog about this since the day it happened and just haven't found the time!

Jon surprised me in a big way on Valentine's Day weekend! In almost 15 years (October 12th!) of marriage, he has not given me any jewelry since my wedding band. So imagine my surprise when he gave me not 1 but 2 velvet boxes in one night!!! Right before we left to go out, he gave me these beautiful earrings...

and then when we were at dinner, he presented this anniversary band!!!!!

What a fun thing to be so surprised - this is nothing I asked for or hinted at, it was totally his doing! I asked him what has gotten into him lately as he has become such a great gift giver (remember this one?) and he just smiled and said, "I'm a late bloomer, baby".

I love this man and our life together!

Crazy Adults!

While we were in WI for Christmas, we were trying to get a picture of all of the kids -- Jon captured the crazy adults trying to get the kids to smile. What a bunch of freaks! :-)

Christmas 2010

long overdue, but want to document it nonetheless...we once lost a lot of pictures off of our computer (we are terrible at backing things up) and our blog saved the day as I had posted many of our favorites on here.

Christmas Eve w/ the DiCos...

DiCo cousins!

I guess every family insists on taking pics of all of the kids even though it's practically torture! :-)

Christmas Eve service (the first time we've been able to go in several years - it was so special and I don't think we'll miss one again - so great to take time out of the busy-ness and reflect on the true meaning of Christmas - it's really not just a cliche!)

Christmas morning at home...

think they're excited to get a Wii?!!!

The day after Christmas, we made the long trek (15+ hour drive) to WI!

so exciting to meet our newest nephew & niece - Ezra & Naomi - born on October 12th!

the awesome chefs of our family!

My awesome Grandma Lowery was there!

Even Grandma got into it with the help of her walker! :-)

Our (short!) time with our best friends, the Martys:

the kids were coming out of their skin w/ excitement!